


System and Gradation

by Zoe Rayne (MontanaHarper)



Series: Anonymity is Overrated [2]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-03
Updated: 2006-06-03
Packaged: 2017-10-11 20:32:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/116795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MontanaHarper/pseuds/Zoe%20Rayne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"I don't suppose you've seen Dr. McKay recently? Say, in the last few minutes?" He kept his tone casual. He suspected that most people around here wouldn't hesitate to squeal on McKay, but he'd still rather not have his search for the man stick in anyone's mind.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	System and Gradation

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Classy Motherf*cker Challenge, prompt 24: We caught a glimpse of everything / And no regrets just simple memories.
> 
> I poked at John Blonde until he wrote [his own sequel](http://filenotch.livejournal.com/32179.html) to No Anarchy in the Universe. Check it out; it's geek-a-licious.
> 
> 30toseoul made sure I didn't commit any military faux pas and Casspeach did her usual fabulous job of shredding the rest

> There is no chance, and no anarchy, in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.  
>  —Ralph Waldo Emerson

John got to the SGC early the next morning, hiding dark circles behind his sunglasses and hoping to find McKay before their first debriefing, but he was out of luck. McKay slid into his seat at the conference table about thirty seconds before the meeting was scheduled to start, and there was no time for them to speak privately. Worse, he couldn't seem to catch McKay's eye, which would have been really suspicious except that nothing in McKay's manner indicated that he was being intentionally evasive.

When they broke for lunch, McKay was out of the room and down the hall before John could even stand up, but that didn't necessarily mean anything, either; McKay and mealtimes had a special relationship. John headed around the table, intent on following, but Elizabeth called his name and he spent five minutes answering some off-the-record questions for General Landry, the itch under his skin increasing with each passing second. Once he was free, he made it to the mess hall in record time, but McKay wasn't there.

He started to head back out the door when he caught sight of the operations room tech, eating alone at a table near the wall. Ford had once told him that the sergeant was the go-to guy for anything from information to gray-market goods at the SGC. John figured it couldn't hurt, so he pulled out the chair across from the guy, spun it around, and sat down, straddling it.

"Sergeant—" a quick look at the guy's name tag, "Harriman. How's it going?"

Even in the face of John's most charming casual smile, the sergeant looked wary. "Fine, sir. Can I help you with something?"

"I don't suppose you've seen Dr. McKay recently? Say, in the last few minutes?" He kept his tone casual. He suspected that most people around here wouldn't hesitate to squeal on McKay, but he'd still rather not have his search for the man stick in anyone's mind.

Harriman hesitated for a second, and then said, "He was in here a couple of minutes ago. Piled up a tray and took it away with him. I have no idea which way he went, but he wouldn't have made it off this level with food."

"Thank you, Sergeant." John stood and returned the chair to its previous position, but as he was turning away from the table, Harriman spoke again.

"Major? There's isolation quarters on this level. If I were looking for Dr. McKay, that's where I'd look."

John grinned at him. "Thanks. I owe you one."

It turned out there were four separate suites at the end of the corridor. Three of the four doors were ajar and John pushed them open in turn and peered inside the rooms, just to make sure, even though he didn't think McKay was that subtle. When he turned the knob, the fourth door opened easily.

McKay looked up from his laptop, a half-eaten sandwich almost to his mouth, and his eyes widened slightly, then narrowed; it was the first reaction John had gotten from him all day. "Is there something wrong, Major?"

 _Yes,_ John wanted to say, _you fucked me and then you disappeared._ Instead he pasted on a casual grin and said, "Nah, I just wanted to have a little friendly conversation." He let the door close behind him, working hard to keep his body loose, relaxed, as he crossed the room. He leaned on the back of one of the chairs, looking around the room. "Pretty nice place. Is this where they put up alien dignitaries?"

"No, those rooms are on another level," McKay said, frowning. "This is where they isolate SG teams in crisis situations that don't require actual medical quarantine. And why are you here, exactly? 'A little friendly conversation'? What does that even mean?"

Before McKay could push it further, say something that John didn't actually want recorded for posterity by the cameras he could see in the corners of the room, he said, "Well, actually, I was going to go off-base for lunch—I've been craving a root beer float, and I seem to remember an A&W not too far into town. Want to come with?" And even though it was phrased as a question, John saw McKay recognize the implicit order.

"I—" McKay started, gesturing with the hand that still held his sandwich and shaking his head. John narrowed his eyes and gave McKay the look he'd perfected on off-world missions, the look that meant _shut up, smile and nod, and do what I say_. McKay's mouth thinned into a crooked line, but he said, "Yes. Yes, of course." He dropped the sandwich back onto the plate, closed his laptop, and stood. "After you."

Running the security gauntlet was more time-consuming than John had expected, not to mention more stressful, and McKay's constant babble about everything and nothing didn't help. By the time they reached the parking lot and the car the SGC had assigned John for the duration of his stay on Earth, his pulse was fast enough he could hear the rush of it in his ears. He was pretty sure at this point that McKay had known it was him last night; all the instances of McKay avoiding him this morning plus the obvious signs of nervousness made for a fairly convincing body of evidence.

Once inside the car and outside the gates of the Cheyenne Mountain complex, though, McKay fell silent and all John could hear was the quiet hum of road noise and their combined breathing. John did actually drive to the A&W—he'd been careful for too long to screw up now that he actually had somewhere he wanted to be, had a purpose beyond waiting for his twenty years to be up so he could retire. They waited silently in the short line of cars at the drive-thru, John tapping his fingers against the steering wheel until it felt like McKay's glare was going to burn right through him. He ordered a root beer float and a burger for himself, then looked to McKay with raised eyebrows, but got only a head-shake in return.

John had pulled the car into a parking space and was digging through the bag for a napkin and his burger before McKay finally spoke; it was a lot longer than John had bet on him holding out. "So why are we really here, Major?"

Looking sideways at the stubborn set of McKay's mouth, John decided to cut to the chase. "Last night," he said, "I went to a club. There was this guy there; I never saw his face, but he sucked my dick like a pro, fucked me into next week, and then cut and ran." By the time he finished speaking, he was half-hard in his BDUs, the memory of last night augmented by the fact that his ass was still vaguely sore.

McKay didn't move, rigid in his seat and staring out the windshield. "You expected something different from a sleazy club's buddy booth?" he said, and the words were clipped, sharper even than his usual brand of sarcasm. Sharp enough to sting.

"I expected something different from you, Rodney." And really, it _was_ all about expectations. McKay's anger was surprising because John had expected nervousness, maybe, and embarrassment at having accidentally outed himself—hell, embarrassment at having fucked a friend, a _teammate_ , in the anonymous back room of a club—but the outright hostility didn't make sense, not coming from the Rodney McKay he knew. But then, maybe he didn't know McKay as well as he thought he did, because he never would've imagined him as the anonymous-fuck type in the first place.

 _I want to feel you come, John._ The words had been echoing in his head since McKay had spoken them, breathy and harsh, the night before. Back at his hotel, John hadn't slept at all, lying on the too-soft mattress and staring up at the stripes of moonlight on the ceiling and trying to untangle how he felt about the situation. About McKay.

Dropping the burger back into the bag, he turned sideways in his seat so that he could more or less face McKay, who looked like he'd rather be staring down a Wraith hive ship than having this conversation. John wasn't too thrilled with it either; when he'd been rehearsing their confrontation in his head, McKay had been much less angry and much more willing to talk about the possibility of future blowjobs.

"What?" McKay snapped, and John realized he'd been staring.

"I'm just trying to figure out how someone who's so easy to read could manage to keep such a huge secret," he said with a little more honesty than he'd been planning. It was something he'd been thinking about from the moment he'd left the club last night; he was missing a piece to the puzzle.

McKay didn't seem to notice the lack of tact. "You of all people should know a little bit about secrets," he said, still hostile.

The anger didn't make a lot of sense; McKay obviously wasn't an out-and-proud crusader, judging John for being closeted. Hell, John couldn't remember McKay mentioning anyone's sexual orientation before, even though he was sure McKay knew Simpson was a lesbian. And maybe that was where it was coming from: McKay didn't like feeling left out of the loop. "Is that why you're pissed off?" he asked. "Because I didn't tell you I play for both teams?"

McKay finally looked at him, his expression something between incredulous and 'you are such a moron.' "I'm pissed off because it was totally irresponsible of you to go there. Who knows what kind of diseases you could've picked up, or what kind of violent pervert might have gotten you at his mercy. You could've been gang raped! You could've been murdered!"

And that gave John pause, because it made absolutely no sense. He shook his head and said, "If it's such a dangerous place, what the hell were you doing there?" To his surprise, McKay blushed at his words.

"I might possibly have...followed you there."

Heart pounding from the adrenaline surge that McKay's statement triggered, John said, "The _hell_? Why the fuck were you following me?" If McKay could follow him, so could Caldwell or one of Landry's men or anyone else from the SGC who had an axe to grind. So much for being circumspect.

"I didn't start out following you, Major," McKay said, and he'd gone from vaguely contrite to defensive. "You blew past me on the highway doing eighty; I followed, thinking—like an idiot—that maybe there was some emergency or that maybe you were in trouble."

The part of John that wasn't somewhere between offended and panicked was kind of pleased that McKay cared enough to check up on him. "So, what then? You saw me go into the club, followed me inside...?" _...fucked me and left,_ he didn't say. Things still didn't add up, though. John had no doubt that McKay really was angry about the risks he thought John had taken, but there was more to it than that.

McKay fidgeted a little in his seat, but he didn't look away. "By the time I'd paid for a membership, you were nowhere in sight. I checked a few booths and was about to go on into the bar when this guy ducked out from behind one of the curtains. Once he was gone, I looked in and, um...and I recognized your, uh. Your arm." The blush was creeping back up McKay's face and John found it oddly endearing.

"Right." And they both knew what happened after that. "Is it going to be a problem for you to keep working with me?" he asked, because he knew McKay didn't let go of things easily. For that matter, John needed to get to a point where looking at McKay's mouth didn't make his dick twitch eagerly.

"Regardless of what you think about my ability to keep secrets, I _have_ been working on highly classified projects for your government since I was nineteen. You don't need to worry that I'll kiss and tell." McKay's jaw was thrust out, his shoulders tense, and John recognized a deflection when he saw it.

He shook his head. "You know I'm not worried about that."

"Then what? Afraid I'll expect a repeat performance?" McKay's gaze flicked away, through the windshield, and John thought, _Bingo._

Maybe they could work this out to their mutual satisfaction, without their professional relationship suffering at all. That is, if John was right about McKay's other, unspoken issue being jealousy. "Actually," he said, moving one hand carefully to rest on McKay's thigh, "I was kind of hoping for a repeat performance. Tonight, maybe."

McKay's eyes widened, and he looked up from where John's fingers were slowly sliding higher, then pushed John's hand away abruptly. "Are you crazy?" he hissed. "What if someone sees that? You're in uniform! Plus, we need to get back. We've got—" McKay checked his watch, "ten minutes. If we're late, Elizabeth will kill us and then we'll _never_ get to have sex again." Which was both a yes and easier than John had thought it would be.

With a grin, he put the car into reverse and backed out of the parking space. McKay ate John's hamburger on the way, John's float melted into kind of a creamy root beer flavored slush, and they ended up jogging into the conference room two minutes late, but all in all John counted it as a win.


End file.
